The headlines might have read.

     The great Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla was working on a world-wide system of wireless telegraphy and power transmission financed by investment banker J.P. Morgan in 1902. Due to prevailing business conditions, Morgan was late on the final payment, which caused expensive delays in the project. This snowballed into a complete halt in the project and unpaid obligations/bills with angry creditors suing Tesla for payment.

     The project never was completed when Morgan refused to front any more money and Tesla was unable to persuade any others to invest, due to his acrimonious relations with the great Morgan and his own desperation and eroding public and private confidence in his claims. This ruined an otherwise fine career, and who knows what benefit to mankind. Tesla realized too late he should have tended his own bank better. Question: Why didn't Tesla declare bankruptcy and reorganize? Maybe go back to work for Edison, and humble himself for awhile to regain his traction and re-finance by self-investing and a solid full-time job?

     Granted this was 1902 and beyond in New York State, but I fail to understand why bankruptcy was not ever mentioned as an earlier option, when it became obvious this was becoming a public embarrassment to everyone concerned and a causing a devastating loss of credibility to Tesla. Was it vanity, pride or the unwavering faith that somehow it will all work out, when saying to self, "I just don't know how or when, because how could "I" be wrong and fail?"

This reminds of me of the poem Footprints in the Sand by Margaret Fishback Powers:

One night I dreamed a dream.
As I was walking along the beach with my Lord.
Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life.
For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand,
One belonging to me and one to my Lord.

After the last scene of my life flashed before me,
I looked back at the footprints in the sand.
I noticed that at many times along the path of my life,
especially at the very lowest and saddest times,
there was only one set of footprints.

This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it. 
"Lord, you said once I decided to follow you,
You'd walk with me all the way.
But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life,
there was only one set of footprints.
I don't understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me."

He whispered, "My precious child, I love you and will never leave you
Never, ever, during your trials and testings.
When you saw only one set of footprints,
It was then that I carried you."

- by Margaret Fishback Powers

     Great success is often teetering and we often do not realize it was because of the shoulders we rode on that we were carried across the finish-line victoriously. We think we did it all by ourselves more or less and our ego inflates till life sticks a pin in our balloon and we go crashing back to Earth again. Great expectations lead to great victory AND great defeat.